Management Tutorial
1. Organising Grand Prix Manager 2 You can set up Grand Prix Manager 2 to suit your own style of play. Under the Options Menu (top-left in the title bar of Main Menu screen) the Hot Icons Toolbar sets up the screen icons that you’ll be using the most. These will sit at the top of most screens (if this option is selected) and be available for instant access to key screens. Each manager will have their own preference but, for now, select (change to ticks): Car Internals, Car Externals, R&D, Testing, Manufacturing, Car Set-Up, Profit & Loss, E-Mail and Sponsors’ Time. You can assign up to a maximum of 10 Hot Icons. 2. Planning your Triumph Look at your Personnel (click on the button marked Personnel and select the following): Drivers Designers Engineers Mechanics Get to know who’s working for you and who is around from other teams who might be available in the following seasons. Your team personnel will be in place for this year but you’ll have to plan ahead. You can Offer Deals to existing Personnel for next season’s contract, but remember you’ll probably have to offer more to keep them in your employ. Note: When changing figures of any type in Grand Prix Manager 2 click on the number in the box, you will see a cursor, insert/delete a figure and press Return to confirm the number. In addition, look at the quality of the Assistants available - why not try to increase the overall standard of Assistants? Increase Excellent/Very Good and decrease Average/Trainee. Obviously, this will add to your team salary costs. 3. Look at your Sponsors Sponsors are the lifeblood of Grand Prix. Very few F1 teams would exist without sponsorship. This is an essential part of Grand Prix racing and therefore an essential part of Grand Prix Manager 2. After all, you’ve now got $10 million in the bank but each race could cost you more than $1 million to prepare and run so, at that rate, you’ll be bankrupt three-quarters of the way into the season without extra money. How can you raise money? 4. Sponsor Interest Level Liaison ‘points’ must be high with Sponsors in order for them to offer the most money to your team. These are increased by: Allocating staff to concentrate on a particular company Using promotional items Doing well in the Grand Prix events (scoring points). * Select the Sponsors button and select the Sponsors Time option. Take the Advice given and concentrate on working with any selected sponsor. * Increase Time Allocated by the Commercial Department for that sponsor. * The quality of your Commercial Manager and Assistants is important to wooing the right people. * Try to Offer Deal and (if interest is shown) select an area on the Uniform/Helmet/Car for the sponsor’s logo. Be careful though, some sponsors will get worried if you try to carry too many Ads/Logos. In the final analysis, if you have success on the race track, you’ll attract the major sponsors. So all the hard work you put in on the car development and testing will pay off (literally). 5. Look at Your Contracts (click the Contracts button and select an option) You won’t be able to race until you’ve set up your Contracts, so this is one of the first things to do when starting a new game. 6. Engine Contract Top teams will have engines provided for them for free, but the lesser teams will have to negotiate with (and pay) engine suppliers. Top team managers must still negotiate for next season’s engine. 7. Tyres/Spares/Fuel Contracts Again these are crucial to success. Look at the quality rating of the supplier and the cost. You can choose how many races to commit to, but the company might request a complete season’s deal. You can ‘haggle’ here and companies might be willing to receive less money for a longer commitment. 8. Security It’s not essential to have a security contract, but it’s wise to set one up if you intend to research and develop the technology. Otherwise, you’ll find other teams have ‘acquired’ and benefited from all of your hard (and expensive) work. 9. L'ook at your Finances (click on the Finances button)' As already stated, money is everything in Grand Prix management and, in this game, if you run out of cash, you cannot race. So, the first place to look is the Bank Balance summary on the top-right of the screen. The figure in the title bar shows you how much cash you’ve got in the bank. 10. Profit & Loss For a more detailed breakdown go to the Profit & Loss option (it should now be one of your Hot Icons). This provides all Income and Expenditure details and reveals where you might be weak financially. For instance, if your Testing costs are extremely high, where are you opting to test? Your home base track or somewhere that costs a fortune to get to? 11. Prize Money Prize money will not keep your team afloat financially but it’s still good to have. Remember that FIA prize money to teams after each race breaks down as follows: $10,000 per point $10,000 for pole position $5,000 for the fastest lap. In addition to this figure, an amount will be added for EACH RACE based on LAST YEAR’S performance. This is given to the team just for turning up. (Grand Prix Manager 2 will base this money on the 1995 results.): $25,000 for 5th $50,000 for 4th $75,000 for 3rd $100,000 for 2nd $125,000 for 1st. 12. Bank Loans Visiting the bank is another worthwhile exercise that you’ll be wise to get familiar with. But be careful, the bank will not loan ridiculous amounts of money and will demand a good rate of interest to service the loan each month. Remember that a bank will only list the capital sum that you have repaid NOT including the interest. So, on a sum of $250,000, you may repay $9,374 in the first month which will be shown on your Profit & Loss account but the bank will only show $7,812 repaid from the capital sum. 13. Overheads These costs will appear in your Profit & Loss Account and are a general cost to cover ancillary staff necessary to run a F1 Team operation. This cost will increase as the team size increases. 14. Planning for the Future R&D (click on the R&D button) It’s always worth getting your Designers, Engineers and Mechanics researching and developing New Projects. Some of these will be banned in the current year but, if you can second guess the FIA rule makers, you’ll have a head start over rivals (but remember to tighten up security). The Chassis design for next year’s car will also be worked on - check this screen during the season to see the progress. Acquire Technology will let you delve into other teams’ R&D projects; as long as their security is not tight and you can afford the investigation fee. Use this section with care or you might waste a lot of money later on in the season. Finally, in planning for the future of your team, you’d be wise to look at the possibility of Building Facilities. Under the Design button, Building Facilities allows you to plan long-term construction of facilities that can substantially help your team: CAD/CAM Carbon Fibre Construction Unit Wind Tunnel Manufacturing Unit Testing Rig. All these facilities are necessary to get the car designed, built and tested. If you don’t have them you’ll have to pay to hire them. So, plan carefully for what you think you’ll need.